Today we visited the impressive sculpture collection situated in beautiful landscape of Hakone, less than 100 km from Tokyo. Founded in 1969, Hakone Open-Air Museum is Japan’s first of its kind and has over 100 works by international and Japanese artists as well as one of the world’s largest collections of works by the English sculptor Henry Moore. There is also Picasso pavilion featuring a variety of paintings, prints, sculptures, and gold and silver objects by the artist but the outdoor sculpture garden is so good that the pavilion failed to impress in comparison. Amongst the sculptors included in the collection are Auguste Rodin, Niki de Saint Phalle, Joan Miro, Jean Dubuffet, Ossip Zadkine, Barbara Hepworth, Marino Marini, Antony Gormley, Lynn Chadwick, Kenneth Armitage, and Toshio Yodoi, Churyo Sato, Shin Hongo, Shin Yamamoto. The museum is also very child friendly with different structures made for them, such as a maze sculpture that you can walk through and a wooden pavilion that houses a net structure knitted by hand and designed for children to crow in, roll around, and jump on the net. Here is a select visual tour from our visit.
